The Corona
by erimies
Summary: The odds and ends I somehow end up writing for the world of Dreaming of Sunshine by Silver Queen.
1. The perils of red tape

The paperwork department of the Hokage tower was always busy and their tasks as varied as they were boring.

In one corner of the archive a bald man with a bad back was adding in new information about recent insurgents in Kumo; in another a girl with thick glasses carefully scribed vague rumours that the civil war in Mist might have finally been resolved. A tall, lanky man in the Eastern hallway was all but buried in scrolls and files, looking for information about a particular missing nin or a gambling ring or something of the sort; no one had quite managed to get through his mumbling.

Here and there were also the people who were responsible for looking through new missions and finding discrepancies and falsehoods that could indicate a trap, or simply whether the client had told them blatant lies about their situation to save some ryo (no one wanted a repeat of that mess in Wave, thank god it had been before Tsunade and her flaring temper took charge).

_Their_ jobs in particular had been stressful lately; many had been called out for interrogation and then simply disappeared without a word. Spies and traitors, everyone knew. It was difficult not to feel nervous, even with a clean conscience.

Approximately ten minutes before lunch hour, a chuunin by the name of Ryuumaru was called away. He returned five minutes later, pale and sweaty, and all but collapsed in a chair, burying his face in his arms. A man called Takeshi approached him, eyebrow raised impatiently. "Well, what is it? Spit it out. You can't be a traitor if you're still here."

Ryuumaru's expression belonged to a person who expected doom and hellfire in near future. "Tsunade-sama wants me to vet another mission for Team Seven."

There was a second of a pause. Then, chairs clattered on the ground, books were dropped on the floor (and on vulnerable toes) and several people made hasty signs to ward off evil.

"You know _better_ than to speak that name aloud!" Takeshi hissed venomously. People nodded and agreed, some complaining that now they had to look through the records again (a persistent rumour circulated that mentioning the name of That Team out loud was enough to cause all vetted missions to become unreliable again).

Ryuumaru winced and apologised.

(He wasn't sorry, not really. If he had to suffer because the snotty little bastards managed to locate more S-class missing nin, ancient conspiracies or another blasted invasion out of _fucking nowhere_, he wasn't going to be suffering alone.)

* * *

><p>Probably some of you happen to know me and Silver Queen talk a lot. I often end up inspired and write little drabbles for this and that. I figured I might as well share, since she gave her blessing.<p>

I sometimes still scratch at my head as to how we became friends. It really pays off to talk to people. Go give a stranger a chance, you never know if they end up becoming, as Naruto would say, a precious person.


	2. Cross the river

Sai stood in his bare and utilitarian quarters, and looked at his surroundings in a manner that suggested he had never really seen them before.

This was not a room for living, it was a room for existing. There was a little cot for sleeping, hard and unyielding because tools didn't need comfort. There was a little desk for keeping things, but of course he didn't really own anything. There was a bit of space for his gear and his art and…

And he wanted to tear off the pages, to nail them on the walls, just so he could carve some sign of his existence in this space that was, ostensibly, his own.

Sai felt like the world had pulled a carpet from under his feet. That sort of thing would have upset anyone, let alone a person who was used to a dull sort of background noise where there should have been an aria of emotions. What Sai had had were shadows of annoyance when complications arose during a mission, hints of satisfaction after successful ones, and a vague sense of purpose.

The entire mission he had thought things would go back to normal once he returned, had clung to that idea in the middle of the bewildering storm of laughter, friendliness and the kind of bending of rules that, in Root, would have gotten them all stamped with the label 'insubordination' before the ink on the report had time to dry.

_'One cannot cross a river twice'_, he'd once read in a book. He hadn't understood the meaning, back then.

This had all seemed so _normal_ once. The black and white and blood red things that passed for morals around here, in the deepest darkness of Konoha. The strict discipline, where you were nothing but a tool that just happened to be expected to keep itself sharp.

And never asking any questions, ever.

Now, Root was as alien to him as Naruto and Shikako. He could no longer see the sense his life had once made, could no longer believe in the rhetoric of killing one's emotions and serving the village in the shadows.

It was all empty, and fake.

Ironically, the thought hurt. The conditioning was unravelling, slowly but steadily, and one of the first things he felt was to mourn its loss. Sai was changing.

Even that, 'Sai', was just a codename given to him for the mission, surely. And yet... In the darkness behind his eyes, he had begun to consider it his own. A label to the unique person that was him.

Sai, who liked art, and had had a brother, and liked to eat momen tofu. It wasn't much, but it was more than he'd had in years.

_You cannot cross a river twice, _he thought, _because it is no longer the same river. _

He could never return, so where would he go?

* * *

><p>Author's notes:<p>

I don't think it's much of a spoiler that Sai survives the mission. And it's also clear he's already asking questions. I was originally going to wait until the next chapter of DoS, but eh. Not sure I can bring you guys anything before Christmas. Happy holidays to you all!


End file.
